Tributes to Baby P. The government will publish the previously secret serious case review (SCR) into his death. Photograph: Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images

A major review of the child protection system will slash the bureaucracy faced by social workers to allow them to spend more time building relationships with vulnerable families, the government announced today.

Children's minister Tim Loughton, who also confirmed that the government will publish previously secret serious case reviews (SCRs) into the deaths of Baby P and Khyra Ishaq, said he would be happy if the inquiry by social policy expert Professor Eileen Munro recommended scrapping half the rulebook.

Other SCRs that were kept under wraps by the Labour administration and will now be made public include those into the case of two brothers jailed for a brutal attack on two boys in Edlington, near Doncaster, and schoolgirl Shannon Matthews, who was kidnapped and hidden by her own mother in an attempt to claim thousands of pounds in reward money.

In future all SCRs will be published, Loughton said. The move was controversial but essential to ensure that social workers could learn lessons from the mistakes of others, he added.

After cases such as the death of Baby P, where an initial SCR was later shown to be "not worth the paper it was written on", the move was also crucial to restore public confidence in the system.

Loughton said Munro's review, which will make its final recommendations in April next year after interim reports in September and January, will focus on getting social workers back to the frontline, where they can spend time "eyeballing" families face-to-face, rather than "shackled to their procedure manuals and computers".

"I would be very happy if what comes out of this review is that the rule book, the procedure book, is cut in half," the minister said as he launched the review in south London.

He added: "Too many social workers are feeling undermined, overwhelmed and overburdened and we can't afford for that to continue."

Munro said she wanted social workers to have time to play with the children they were responsible for, and talk to their parents properly. There was clear evidence building "decent relationships" with families led to better results, she added.

The amount of paperwork in the job had "mushroomed out of control" and "doing things by the book was not enough".

"It's about social workers going into family homes and being able to talk to children, being able to deal with aggressive parents and the organisation supporting them in that difficult and very emotional work," Munro told the BBC.

Loughton conceded that after several reviews of social work and child protection, including a major public inquiry after the death of eight-year-old Victoria Climbié in 2000 from abuse and neglect, and last year's report by the Social Work Taskforce, some people's reaction to the latest move would be: "Oh, not another review".

But he insisted the work of previous reports would be built upon rather than abandoned, with proposals set out by Moira Gibb of the Social Work Taskforce to go ahead.

The government will also abolish the ContactPoint database holding information on all under 18s.

Loughton said: "The most important thing is not how many boxes are ticked, is not how well the procedures are followed but the most important thing is the quality of the outcomes – are we better protecting that child, is there a better chance by this intervention that a child may survive and may flourish?

"The whole system of child protection has become too much about risk aversion, about ticking boxes, about making sure that various procedure manuals were followed rather than the most important question: is that child safer?"

Research by the union Unison has found that social workers spend up to 80% of their time dealing with paperwork.

The Local Government Association warned that new analysis suggested 61,000 children would come into the care system in England in the next two years, pushing the processes that look after vulnerable children to breaking point and making cuts to buraeucracy even more important. The recent increase in child protection referrals could lead to an leap of nearly 35% in the number of children starting to be looked after in 2011-12 compared to 2007-8, the National Foundation for the Educational Research (NFER) found.

Shireen Ritchie, the chair of the LGA's children and young people board, said: "Social workers on the front line of child protection are already feeling the pressure of more and more cases coming through the door. Every right-minded person wants to know everything is being done to keep children safe from harm. Doing that as well as is humanly possible means making sure resources are being wisely used.

"Children who are at risk, and families which are struggling, will benefit more from additional time with experienced social workers than they will from an increase in the number of forms filled in about them. Some paperwork is essential to doing the best possible job, but it is right to try to reduce bureaucracy where it can ease the pressure on social workers and increase the quality of care offered to children."

The review was broadly welcomed. Anne Longfield, chief executive of the charity 4Children, said: "Spending less time on paperwork is clearly an important part of this, but social workers also need to have the ability and capacity to work with families before they hit crisis point. The review must consider the role social work professionals can play in reducing and preventing family breakdown, child poverty and social dysfunction, as well as helping families come out the other side."

Shaun Kelly, head of safeguarding at Action for Children, said: "It is the people, not the system, who play the most important role in protecting our children, which is why this review's commitment to look at ways of supporting frontline professionals is so welcome.

"Its aims also echo what social workers have told us - that they would like to spend more time with families, and less on paperwork, especially when looking to intervene early in cases of suspected child neglect.

"However, this review should not be about change for change's sake but look at what works, and should be retained, within the current system and what needs to be improved. This would help to develop lasting solutions for professionals and especially for children."

But the NSPCC urged the government to consult widely before starting to publish SCRs in full.

The charity's chief executive, Andrew Flanagan, said: "We must learn the lessons from SCRs. But public bodies need to exercise great care before they publish details of children's lives. The best interests of the children and their families must always come first. There clearly has to be more accountability within the child protection system."

The shadow education secretary, Ed Balls, said he feared another review would put on hold important changes that were now happening in the social work system.

"After the tragedy of Baby Peter – and I'd be the first to admit, I wish I'd moved more quickly on social work reform – we did a huge amount of work. The Social Work Taskforce was a review done by the profession, driven by social workers themselves – a detailed plan of action to keep proper accountability but also get the training, get the support for frontline social workers – and we were making real progress implementing that."